


Breathe

by chronicAngel



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Childbirth, DickBabs Week 2017, Drabble, F/M, POV Third Person, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 11:54:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13317546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronicAngel/pseuds/chronicAngel
Summary: "Babs, I know that it's hard, but you need to breathe right now."DickBabs Week 2017 Day 1: Trust





	Breathe

Dick is pretty used to pain. He's been punched, shot, stabbed, shoved off of rooftops, he's broken bones and had concussions. This should be nothing.

It's not nothing. He suspects that a large part of his current struggle isn't just how hard his hand is being squeezed, although that much pressure being focused on such a small area definitely isn't helping, but because he has to watch her struggle, too. He knows without a doubt that she's in much more pain than he is, and he thinks not for the first time that anyone else would be better suited to be comforting her right now. He, unfortunately, is not anyone else.

"Babs, I know that it's hard, but you need to breathe right now."

Her face, redder than her hair and slicked with sweat, seems to relax a fraction for just a moment as she forces her eyes open and looks at him, though he doubts that she can see him very well without her glasses, which are being dutifully guarded in the waiting room by Tim. She looks surprisingly gentle for a moment, her eyes soft and her mouth the shyest shadow of a smile that he's sure only he can pick up on, like she's completely dropped her guard for just a fleeting moment, the flame of a candle that flickers in a dark room, and then the doctor tells her to _push_ and the flame is roaring, lighting up the whole room again. He brushes the fingers of his free hand through her hair, slicking it back from her forehead where it continues to get caught in sweat.

She's never looked more beautiful to him. Not when she was standing on rooftops with her obnoxiously yellow cape flapping in the wind behind her like she was posing for an OxiClean commercial, waiting for him to join her in his admittedly more obnoxious stoplight-colored uniform. Not on library dates when she'd force him to study rather than spend hours staring at her like he definitely could, sipping on an iced coffee and explaining long trigonometry problems to him like math was her real first language. Not when he'd proposed to her and her eyes shone brighter than he'd ever seen them which, according to her first language, was about the time that they got into this whole mess in the first place. Right now, she's the most beautiful he's seen her, with her hair sticking to her temples and her eyes squeezed shut while her hand squeezes his.

John James Grayson-Gordon arrives in the middle of the night, as many of their family members have been known to do, with wide blue eyes and a tuft of dark hair that is difficult to distinguish between a dark red or a dark brown at the moment. Dick thinks he looks just like Barbara, but she insists the opposite. He hesitates to hold his son, partially because he doesn't trust himself to hold something so delicate, but partially because he doesn't want to take him from Barbara. She holds him like an expert, cradling his head with her hand and her elbow and holding him close to her chest, bare for "skin-to-skin". After what seems like hours, she gives him an amused look.

"You can hold him, you know. I trust you." She offers him the infant's tiny body, and John in turn lifts his arms. "He trusts you, too," she laughs.


End file.
